Emma Lazarus

Emigravit

With sails full set, the ship her anchor weighs.

Strange names shine out beneath her figure head.

What glad farewells with eager eyes are said!

What cheer for him who goes, and him who stays!

Fair skies, rich lands, new homes, and untried days

Some go to seek: the rest but wait instead,

Watching the way wherein their comrades led,

Until the next stanch ship her flag doth raise.

Who knows what myriad colonies there are

Of fairest fields, and rich, undreamed-of gains

Thick planted in the distant shining plains

Which we call sky because they lie so far?

Oh, write of me, not ‘Died in bitter pains,’

But ‘Emigrated to another star!’

Helen Hunt Jackson

‘Dream me mermaid’ – Flights of Fancy

These poems exult in the power of writers – and our own imaginations – to transport us far from the world we know. Within the pages of a book, without leaving the sofa, we can board a ‘dreamland train’ or mount a make-believe steed for pastures either new or fondly remembered. Stevie Smith is whisked to an early-morning island by her exuberantly plumed hat, entirely thwarting her mother’s tedious plan concerning a ‘young man’, and sinks beneath a forlorn sea to a court served by cats. And just what is Gary doing in that dark wood?

Poets have always guided readers through the afterlife, and here are brand new maps. Or, within the space of a few lines, we can travel back – to before the beginning – and watch Nikki Giovanni in ‘Ego Tripping’ as she shakes the world into being. The possibilities are limitless.

In Your Mind

The other country, is it anticipated or half-remembered?

Its language is muffled by the rain which falls all afternoon

one autumn in England, and in your mind

you put aside your work and head for the airport

with a credit card and a warm coat you will leave

on the plane. The past fades like newsprint in the sun.

You know people there. Their faces are photographs

on the wrong side of your eyes. A beautiful boy

in the bar on the harbour serves you a drink – what? –

asks you if men could possibly land on the moon.

A moon like an orange drawn by a child. No.

Never. You watch it peel itself into the sea.

Sleep. The rasp of carpentry wakes you. On the wall,

a painting lost for thirty years renders the room yours.

Of course. You go to your job, right at the old hotel, left,

then left again. You love your job. Apt sounds

mark the passing of the hours. Seagulls. Bells. A flute

practising scales. You swap a coin for a fish on the way home.

Then suddenly you are lost but not lost, dawdling

on the blue bridge, watching six swans vanish

under your feet. The certainty of place turns on the lights

all over town, turns up the scent on the air. For a moment